This week's Restaurant of the Week is the Pass at the Exclusive Hotels-owned South Lodge in West Sussex.
The Pass is a new restaurant concept, I've not seen anywhere else before - the whole dining room is situated in the kitchen, offering customers views of the chefs' live action.
It's an evolution very apt for our times, when foodie customers are just as hungry for the process and personality behind restaurant dishes as they are for the food itself.
The concept of the Pass grew out of an idea for a chef's table, and expanded to its current guise as the hotel incorporated the adventurous design into its refurbishment programme.
The new restaurant is a gleaming hall of chrome and muted clattering, with a green leather banquette and facing stools wrapped round the edge of one corner allowing full views into the quiet hubbub of the chefs in the kitchen.
The man in charge of the youthful four-strong brigade is Matt Gillan, a graduate of acclaimed kitchens including Gordon Ramsay's three-Michelin-starred restaurant on Chelsea's Royal Hospital Road, and the two-Michelin-starred Vineyard at Stockcross, where Gillan worked under John Campbell.
The restaurant's concept lends itself to Gillan's cuisine, which is of a modern European leaning, focusing on bold flavour combinations and a contemporary presentation. The tasting menu set-up - diners can choose between four, six and nine courses, priced at £28, £38 and £78 respectively - adds to the air of theatre.
Dishes include roast frogs' legs with snails, a bacon bonbon, parsley sauce and blackened onions; a rich, salty marathon of a dish that's a bit like wading through a river of Marmite and about which, says Gillan, diners always have an opinion, even if it's not favourable.
The other dishes are on the whole kept light, so that a nine-course menu doesn't become a struggle and carbohydrates are few and far between. There's a velouté of asparagus with poached quails' egg and truffle asparagus; roast lobster, truffle peas, lobster and rose consommé; marinated squab pigeon breast with cauliflower, mustard white beans, roasted apple and anchovy crisps; and scallops, red pepper cannelloni, crystallised olives and shellfish biscuit.
Desserts include a popular dark chocolate mousse with pine nut and rosemary foam, butternut squash cream and smoked fudge; next to a vanilla panna cotta, ginger crumb, popcorn broth and an orange and soya coulis.
The Pass might be a PR-friendly concept, but without a talented chef behind the stove the novelty would wear off very quickly. And while Gillian admits to a few nerves at first, working under 22 sets of diners' eyes every service, it certainly doesn't show any more.
Average spend: £70 including drinks and service
South Lodge Hotel, Brighton Road, Near Horsham, West Sussex RH13 6PS
Tel: 01403 891711
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Hello
This concept was adopted in a very forward thinking hotel/restaurant project in Copenhagen called Nimb. I think it opened in late 2008, but understand that it may now have closed/changed ownership as a result of over-gearing.
It does, however, present a really innovative dining concept.
Regards
Nick Inkster
Thanks for your comment, Nick. I hadn't come across Nimb before. I guess most things have been in done before in some shape or form.